If you can’t afford food, steal it: lessons from Japan

Inflation is a concern for everyone, especially for those living on fixed incomes. With the cost of basic necessities like food and oil rising day-to-day, many people with limited incomes wonder how they are going to afford to put food on the table.

Apparently, the answer for some comes from a story in Japan: steal.

More than two tons of flour, worth 270,000 yen, has been stolen from a wholesale company’s warehouse here, police said.

Investigators suspect that the thief stole the flour in a bid to resell it as flour prices have been rising sharply in recent months.

At around 2 a.m. on Thursday, a 50-year-old employee of Nikkoku Seifun Co.’s distribution center in Higashimatsuyama found 90 bags, each containing 25 kilograms of flour, had disappeared, and alerted police.

Forty of the stolen bags had been loaded on a truck parked inside the distribution center. Investigators later found that the truck had traveled an additional 8 kilometers, judging by its odometer.

Local police suspect that the thief used the truck to transport the flour and later returned the vehicle to the warehouse.

Edward Harrison is the founder of Credit Writedowns and a former career diplomat, investment banker and technology executive with over twenty five years of business experience. He has also been a regular economic and financial commentator in print and on television for the past decade. He speaks six languages and reads another five, skills he uses to provide a more global perspective. Edward holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia University and a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College.